Memories of Rennie Ellis May 24, 2017
Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Metaphor Online , trackbackHead On is finishing up soon and it is a good time to catch up with a pioneering photographer before the festival finishes. Rennie Ellis recorded the underbelly of Kings Cross and its social fabric at a critically changing time in Australia’s history and the photos are still poignant and memorable. His Kings Cross images can be seen at Mossgreen Gallery in Sydney until the 6th of June.
Reynolds Mark “Rennie” Ellis (11 November 1940 – 19 August 2003) was an Australian social and social documentary photographer who also worked, at various stages of his life, as an advertising copywriter, seaman, lecturer, and television presenter. He founded Brummels Gallery of Photography, Australia’s first dedicated photography gallery, established both a photographic studio and an agency dedicated to his work, published 17 photographic books, and held numerous exhibitions in Australia and overseas. He died after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 62.
His first exhibition and book, formed from work in Kings Cross, Sydney, followed in 1971. A year later he re-established Brummels Gallery, a commercial gallery established in the mid-1950s to exhibit contemporary Modernist Australian painting, sculpture and prints, as ‘Brummels Gallery of Photography’, above a restaurant of that name in Toorak Road, South Yarra,[2] and in 1974 Ellis went on to form Scoopix Photo Library in Prahran, which later became the exclusive Australian agent for New York’s Black Star photos. In 1975 he opened his studio, Rennie Ellis & Associates, at the same premises, and operated from there for the rest of his life.
The Guardian newspaper has also looked critically at his work.
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